Particularly after a Defense-hating
Democrat administration, any truly needed Defense budget cuts may be offset by
the need to rebuild.

The Constitutional mandate for Defense is established in Article 1 Section 8, as follows:

… To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia,
and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service
of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the
Appointment of the Officers, and the authority of training the Militia
according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; …

To fulfill that Constitutional mandate, in fiscal year 2010 the DOD
budgeted $1.2 trillion, representing about 4.5% of GDP, and about 21% of
the whole US budget. Nearly all the rest of the remaining 89% of the
2010 US budget was spent on entitlements and social programs. Still,
compared to other nations, the 2010 US defense budget came in second in
actual dollars, but about 30th in per capita military spending
among nations. Defense has been and is being radically cut under this
administration; indeed, Defense is the only part of the budget
this administration has cut, while radically increasing spending
everywhere else. There is an important message in that fact.

The need to be able to defend ourselves should be obvious.
What may be less obvious, but is no less important, is the need to be
able to project very serious military power not only beyond our shores,
but to anywhere in the world. The modern world being what it is, there
is no free-world nation other than America capable of making a credible
threat to such huge military powers as Russia and China. Indeed, most
free-world nations have no capability of so much as defending themselves
against such powers, let alone posing any sort of threat to them.

America spends considerably more on citizen entitlements than on
defense, but most European nations moved past that point long before we
did. They now have populations heavily dependent on government
entitlements, and they have become nations increasingly dependent upon
America for defense, as they become more and more helpless over time.
Few of them have any capability of projecting any serious military force
beyond their own borders, and so they present no serious threat to any
would-be foreign enemies. Not only can they not carry any fight to any
enemy’s territory, but most of them could not even defend themselves on
their own ground against any significant aggressor.

I submit the argument that, at this time there are, in the entire
world, four world military powers that might be considered serious
threats by any nation anywhere, and they are, the U.S., the U.K., Russia
and China. Two of these four, currently, are purposely reducing their
military power, and two of them are purposely increasing it. The two
who are reducing their own military power have no history, at least in
the last century or so, of military aggression toward others, and the
two who are radically increasing their military power do indeed have a
long, long history of military aggression against their neighbors, and
against other nations, near and far. In fact, their national economies
have often depended upon military conquest and domination of others.

That is not to say that such rogue states as Iran and North Korea
pose no threat; but the threat they pose is to do very grievous harm to
others in the world, and to perhaps invade and conquer others very near
to them. Compared to the super-powers, their ability to project
significant and long-term military power very far beyond their own
borders is quite limited. Of greater significance, at least at this
moment in history, is the threat posed by the freedom and the advance of
the ideologies of Marxism and of Islam, because they present an ever present and on-going non-centralized threat from inside
America and other free nations. These ideologies convert, recruit and
train mortal enemies of free nations within the very citizen populations
of the free nations. It is often done under the innocent sounding
names of diversity, and/or tolerance, and/or religious freedom, and/or freedom of expression, and so forth. But Marxism and Islam remain mortal enemies of free nations, and of liberty.

Still, the danger of outright military conquest has never left
the planet. Nor has evil left the world. Treachery is always afoot.
When I try to imagine what the world might be like with a totally
disarmed America, I begin to shudder. No matter what agreements they
might sign, Marxism and Islam will never disarm, nor will they
ever peacefully coexist, for very long, with the liberty of man. They
seek and intend to dominate man, and to dominate the world. People who
believe that there is no such thing as good guys and bad guys are living
in some unrealistic and doomed dream world, in which their idealistic,
multi-colored happy-faced balloon never seems to land.

Let us now look at DOD in greater detail.

U.S. Defense Forces of the Army, Navy and
Marine Corps began life in 1775 during the Revolutionary War. The War
Department, which would become the Department of Defense, was
established in 1789, and the U.S. Coast Guard was established in 1790.
The U.S. Army Air Corps was spit off from the Army to form the U.S. Air
Force in 1947. The organization and function of DOD is set forth in the
Title 10 of the United States Code. Title 10 also provides the legal
basis for the role, mission and organization of each of the services,
through specific Subtitles.

Subtitle A: Military law (Uniform Code of Military Justice.)

Subtitle B: Army.

Subtitle C: Navy and Marine Corps.

Subtitle D: Air Force.

Subtitle E: Reserve Components.

The Coast Guard is a unique force, today normally under the authority of
the cabinet level Department of Homeland Security, except during war,
when it comes under the Department of the Navy. In my opinion, it
should always be under the Department of the Navy (or under its
own department,) and the Department of Homeland Security should not
exist; but that’s another topic for another webpage, when I get to it.
The Coast Guard is an armed force, like the others, but quite different
from them. Combat is a secondary or tertiary mission of the Coast
Guard. It’s primary mission involves the law enforcement functions
related to border security, interdiction of pirates and other criminals,
search and rescue missions and ice-breaking missions.

The Top of the Chain of Command
fixes civilian authority over military authority. The President is the
Commander In Chief of all armed forces. His Secretary of Defense is the
Cabinet-level director of the military. Reporting to the Secretary of
Defense are the civilian Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy
and Secretary of the Air Force. Their military counterparts are
military officers of the highest rank: the Chief of Staff of the Army,
the Chief of Staff of the Navy, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and
over them, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would be the
military counterpoint to the civilian Secretary of Defense.

So, in the main bureaucratic structure under DOD, we have the obvious
ones: the Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy and the
Department of the Air Force. There are other DOD agencies, chief among
them:

Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Pentagon Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

National Geospacial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)>

National Security Agency (NSA).

National War College, and several joint service schools.

Let’s look at them.

Missile Defense Agency (MDA):
MDA holds responsibility for providing a layered defense against all
classes and all ranges of ballistic missiles. The agency is
strategically tasked with a continuing program of research, development,
testing, implementing and updating of multiple complementary
interceptors, and also sensors and detectors based on land, sea, in the
air and space-based sensors and detectors, and, of course, various
required command and control systems.

The “layered approach” means developing full capability of defending against a ballistic missile in the Boost Phase, in the Ascent Phase, in the Midcourse Phase, and in the Terminal Phase.

A ballistic missile is most vulnerable in the boost phase, but
the counter measure must be very close and very fast. A boost-phase
ballistic missile is easy to track because it is bright and hot.
However, a ready counter-measure cannot always be in the neighborhood of
a launch from within a vast enemy country, or from an undetected
submarine deep beneath the surface of the sea. The ascent phase is
somewhat less challenging; it is the phase after powered flight but
before the apogee of its flight. The midcourse phase is begins after
the booster burns out and the vehicle is coasting in space. Ground
based defense missiles can defend against them. The terminal phase is
the last chance scenario, when the ballistic missile is coming down on
the target, and the defensive action will be very close to the defended
target.

Boost phase defense systems such as the Kinetic Energy
Interceptor (KEI) and the Airborne Laser (ABL) have been cancelled or
de-funded by Congress. There is a pitifully minimal $10 million R&D
project looking at an airborne AMRAAM based missile defense system.
Anti-missile missiles may either hit the ballistic missile, or get close
enough to disable the warhead and all electronics on the missile.

Ascent Phase Intercept (API) is highly classified, and all we can know about it is that it is under development. I think.

Midcourse phase includes ground-based interceptor missiles
and the required ground-based radars and command and control systems.
This program has a remarkable record of successful hit-to-kill tests in
space. The Obama administration has canceled plans to install
ground-based missile defense in Poland in favor of the sea-borne Aegis
program.

Probably the most famous midcourse anti-ballistic missile system
is US Navy’s ship-born Aegis missile system. Aegis also transmits
target detection information to the ground based midcourse defense
system. Obama administration over-emphasis on cutting defense spending,
including cuts in crews and “streamlined” training and maintenance has
led to a drastic decline in Aegis readiness, according to a Navy panel
headed by a retired Admiral. I’m sure the administration felt that
money wasted on Aegis system maintenance and Aegis warship crews could
be better spent on Obamacare.

Another midcourse anti-ballistic missile program under test was
the Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) program, in which a single booster could
launch multiple small kinetic energy based warheads that could
intercept and destroy multiple ballistic missiles, including decoys.
The carrier vehicle and the individual killer vehicles each had their
own onboard sensors and guidance systems, and the multiple killer
vehicles each only weighed about 10 pounds. Many such vehicles in a
“cloud” increased the probability of hits on all incoming ballistic
missiles and countermeasures. All planned objectives were achieved in
preliminary tests. However, in April 2009, the Obama administration
“reshaped” the Pentagon’s budget, and terminated the MKV program.

Terminal phase anti-ballistic missile defense also includes
multiple programs. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is a
system to shoot down short, medium and long range missiles with a
hit-to-kill kinetic energy missile. That means there is no warhead,
just the kinetic energy created in an impact. The hit-to-kill
technology is similar to Patriot PAC-3, which carries a small warhead,
and the Patriot PAC-2, which carries a warhead with a proximity fuse.
THAAD is designed to hit Scud type missiles, but may also have a more
limited capability against ICBMs.

Patriot is a surface-to-air anti-ballistic missile system using
an advanced missile and a high performance radar. Patriot systems have
been sold to several allies, including Israel and Poland.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA):
DARPA develops new technology for military use. Many of the things we
take for granted today came out of DARPA R&D, such as computer
hypertext, computer networking and so forth, despite the self
congratulatory false claims of Al Gore. The mission of DARPA is
two-fold:

To prevent military technological surprise to the US.

To create technological surprise to US enemies.

The main goal is to attain and maintain US military technological
superiority in the world. The main focus is on near-term, two to four
year projects by small dedicated teams to keep technical defense
capabilities on the cutting edge of technology.

Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force requirements drive
DARPA efforts, but DARPA operates independent of them, freeing them to
do their main job, and freeing DARPA to do R&D. The only real
charter of DARPA is radical innovation, which works best when unhindered
by bureaucracy and authority. No radical or transformational military
development in the last century came out of any request from the
military; that includes the jet engine, the helicopter, the atomic bomb,
various robots and unmanned vehicles of all sorts, and just about any
innovative weapon you can think of. DARPA developed technologies
include such every-day common-use things today as GPS and the Internet.

National Geospacial-Intelligence Agency (NGA):
Geospacial Intelligence, or GEOINT, involves gathering and analyzing
imagery and other forms of information depicting
geographically-referenced features and objects on or near the surface of
the earth. This information originates in mapping, surveying and other
activities, gathered by commercial and government satellite,
reconnaissance aircraft, unmanned aircraft, GPS, recorded information
such as maps and charts, commercial databases, utility schematics and so
forth.

National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Security Service (CSS:
NSA is an intelligence agency that does not perform any human or field
operations; NSA is strictly limited to cryptography and to
communications and signals of any kind. NSA concentrates on all
varieties of foreign communications, from radio, telephone, microwave,
laser, internet or any other form of human communications. NSA also
protects US communications against foreign access. NSA has a heavy
emphasis on cryptanalysis and cryptology, and may run the largest
super-computer complexes in the world, and possibly run the world’s
largest computer networks. NSA is reputed to be the world’s largest
employer of mathematicians. CSS is a closely related intelligence
agency that acts as intelligence coordinator between NSA and the
crypto-intelligence organizations in each of the military branches.

For most of its life, the public did not know that NSA existed.
When questioned, government representative’s responses earned NSA the
nickname No Such Agency. The super-secrecy of NSA, and internal
directives to never speak of it in public earned NSA the internal
nickname Never Say Anything. The quiet NSA mission is to listen,
gather, decrypt and analyze. NSA is always quietly listening.

NSA goes so far as to actually manufacture it’s own microchips
for its own cryptographic purposes. NSA has the rather unique ability
to obtain patents approvals from the US Patent and Trademark Office
under an on-going gag order. NSA patents for codes and other tools are
not revealed to the public, and they never expire. If someone else
files for an identical patent, NSA’s patent is then revealed, and NSA is
awarded the new patent for the normal expiration term. Therefore, some
few of NSA’s patents are now public knowledge. One of them involves an
ability to actually geographically locate an individual computer on a
network or the internet based on “latency” of multiple network
connections.

National War College (NWC,) and several joint service schools:
NWC offers senior-level courses of study in national security strategy
to selected military officers and high ranking federal officials as
preparation for high level policy, command and staff responsibilities.
Most of the student body is representative of land, sea and air forces,
with a smaller representation from the Department of State and other
federal level departments and agencies. Faculty is composed of officers
from all branches of service, and academicians from the intelligence
community, Department of State and other agencies involved in security
issues.

=====

However you feel about Defense spending, it
is necessary for you to know that it is being radically cut by this
administration in a time of rampant world instability, and that much of
the world’s current instability was brought about or contributed to by
this administration. Now, everybody would agree that there is a need to
eliminate the sort of fraud, abuse and stupidity that brings about such
scandals as the infamous $1,500 toilet seat, but that’s not the sort of
budget cuts that are currently happening to Defense. They are major,
significant across the board cuts, expressed as percentages of
budget. I submit that the real purpose for these budget cuts involves
treachery and evil intent.

Currently, China is building modern aircraft carriers and other
ships at a faster rate than the US is moth-balling or scrapping them.
While the US is cutting back on or even eliminating advanced aircraft
and weaponry, China is making great strides in stealth technology and
new, innovative systems, largely thanks to having obtained American
military secrets during the Clinton administration, and probably during
this one.

All you have to do is look at Obama’s own written and spoken
words to know that he actually hates America, her history, and the very
idea of her superiority to any other country. The man is a Marxist, and
therefore diametrically opposed to Constitutional America. He seeks to
replace the America that exists with something else. Here’s what I
said about that in the Liberty Versus Marxism and Islam page:

The final goal of the true drivers of Marxism, and the final goal of the true drivers of Islam, are precisely the same: Borderless, nation-less, one world global government,
which is to say, a world dictatorship. The highest ranking Marxists in
the world, and the highest ranking Moslems in the world, are alike in
this: They don’t particularly give a damn whether the final force that
achieves world victory is Marxist or it is Islamic. They will easily
pretend to be either Marxist or Moslem, as opportunity dictates, so long
as they get to be the one who drives the world bus. The banner on the
world bus can be changed quickly and easily. The people of the world
will be kept in line by a combination of their own stupidity and a
program of terror. It’s been done before, many times, on a smaller
scale.

Both Marxism and Islam seek to gain ground through chaos; the
more chaos and economic failure, the better. Increasing chaos leads
inevitably to opportunity. That’s why Obama would benefit from a $20
per gallon price of gasoline. That’s why he would benefit from American
economic collapse. That’s why he would benefit from severe depression,
and even anarchy. That’s why he would benefit even from catastrophic
terrorist attack. He would benefit from anarchy, revolution, multi-way
revolution, even civil war. I submit that there is no terrible
event you could imagine, from which a high-level Marxist or Moslem would
not find opportunity, provided he survived it.

I will go farther than that. An American dictator wannabe would
potentially benefit from foreign military invasion, or even from a
thermonuclear hit, provided he survived it. Recognize this: a dictator
wannabe sitting at the level of a President Obama is a super-gambler and
risk taker, for the sake of the destruction of the American
super-power, and for the advancement of his favored ideology. His
vision of America’s future involves smoke, charred ruins and a humbled
and suffering people.

Now, some of you will think I’m nuts, and this is crazy talk.
And that’s fine. This is still America. If you think Obama is just
another American politician who won a big election, and I’m a crazy man,
then support and follow the clear and obvious policy of the Democrat
Party, which is to radically cut Defense spending, radically increase
social entitlement programs, radically restrict oil and fossil fuel
production and consumption, radically control big business and big
finance, and radically increase taxes on the rich. Put your faith in
the Communist Party. I mean Democrat.

I have stated my opinion; what’s yours?

=====

Sarcastic Acronym Hover-Link Footnotes: For the convenience of those readers using devices that lack a mouse, these footnotes are provided for all webpages, in case any webpage contains any hover-links. (If you don't have a mouse, you can't "hover" it over a link without clicking just to see the simple acronym interpretation. Click a footnote link to see the gory details.)

Changes pursuant to changing the website URL
and name from
Thinking Catholic Strategic
Center to
Catholic American Thinker.

Pulled the trigger on the 301 MOVE IT option
June 1, 2014. Working my way through all the webpages. .

Regards,

Vic

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Silence in the face of evil is speaking. "We've had enough of exhortations to be silent!
Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten
because of silence." Saint Catherine of Siena

“An
error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is
suppressed…. He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of
secret complicity.” – Pope Felix III

“Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God's creatures.
What you are in God's sight is what you are and nothing more”—Justice Clarence Thomas

"Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil-in any sin at all-and who thus rejects redemption." Pope Saint John Paul the GreatDOMINUM ET VIVIFICANTEM

"Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it, and, indeed, to neglect to confound evil men-when we can do it-is no less a sin than to encourage them." Pope St. Felix III

If a purposeful violator of the Constitution who is a sworn officer of the governemt is not a domestic enemy of America and a traitor, then
there is no such thing, and the Constitution itself is without meaning,
and America has lost its grounding and its very purpose for being. Anti-American-Court

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Still Time To Get It Right. “Once you understand the role of energy in everything, you can begin to appreciate why there's simply nothing more important to get right. Energy is at the root of everything. If you have sufficient energy, anything is possible. But without it, everything grinds to a halt.” Chris Martenson

The Heresy of Chrislam. Those claiming that the “Allah” of Islam’s Qu’ran and Yahweh or God of both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are one and the same are missing one glaring point: GOD NEVER CONTRADICTS HIMSELF.

Never be lukewarm.Life itself demands passion.He who is indifferent to God has already forfeited his soul.He who is indifferent to politics has already forfeited his liberty.In America, religion is not mere window dressing and citizenship is not a spectator sport.Do not allow our common destiny as a whole people to just happen without your input. Seek the Truth; find the Way; live the Life; please God, and live forever.

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The Purpose for this grouping of links is to show, first, the unconstitutional bureaucracies that need to be cut, and second, to highlight ideas toward restoring America toward her original Constitutional design.

The Cut The Spending PagesMost of this site describes what is wrong; this one describes what to do about it. If we don't get rid of the extra-Constitutional entities we are over-paying for they will eventually economically strangle us to death as a nation.

"We belong to the Church militant; and She is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass Her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights.”--Pope Pius XII

"It is not lawful to take the things of others to give to the poor. It is a sin worthy of punishment, not an act deserving a reward, to give away what belongs to others."--St. Francis of Assisi

Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance
may deride it, but in the end, there it is.—Winston
Churchill

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who
deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.—Ayn Rand

Atheist Genesis:

In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing happened to nothing.
And then nothing accidentally exploded and created everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally encountered other bits of everything and formed some new kinds of everything.
And then some bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into self-replicating bits of everything.
And then some self-replicating bits of everything accidentally arranged themselves into dinosaurs.
See?

“ … for I have sworn upon
the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind
of man.” wrote Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush in
the year of our Lord 1800. The context
involved resistance to any form of Christianity or Deism legally imposing
itself throughout the USA. We must wonder what he might say
about our current government's forced imposition of strict secularism – i.e.,
anti-theism – throughout the USA. I submit that legally enforced secularism of society, like theocracy, like Marxism,
and like Islam, is, precisely, a form of tyranny over the mind of man.Nothing good can come from the religious cleansing of Judaeo-Christian society. Government imposed secularism is just another form of theocracy.